


dry hands

by orphan_account



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dehydration, Desert, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Survival, and legend ends up in a desert, au where they switch individually, drabble-ish i guess? its a bit short :(, ravio&link could be read as friends or romance i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24734749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The first time Legend switched into a new Hyrule, he woke up in a desert.
Relationships: Link & Ravio (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	dry hands

When Link wakes, he is too hot.

This is not unusual. Most days, he wakes caught in sweat and the haze of sleep, dragged awake by nightmares. Waking up too hot is to be expected, when everything about sleep can be stifling. But this is a different kind of heat. It has sunk beneath his clothing, raking sand over his skin with a feeling like fragments of glass. His blood pulses at the side of his jaw.

Link blinks himself awake slowly. He tries to move his arms, but their movements do not correspond to his demands. He braces his palms against the mattress; it feels like scratching-sand, sharp against his fingertips. It doesn’t feel like his bed should, or like it ever has.

Link opens his eyes and he sees the desert. The sands stretch out, long and low, the horizon blurred by heat-haze. The air tastes ─ dry, almost. Stale. Link breathes it in. A gust of wind makes him swallow a mouthful of sand.

Where is he?

_ Focus,  _ Link tells himself, pushing back the encroaching panic. What does he have? What does he need to find?

He’s still in sleepwear, of which the tunic is too long. There’s the dagger he keeps beneath his pillow, as he has ever since his first quest; Link ducks beneath a suspiciously convenient alcove and cuts the excess off in a large strip, even as he continues to catalogue what he has. A waterskin is balanced against a cooking pot. A half-empty waterskin, at that.

_ Alright,  _ Link hums, almost bitterly.  _ You have half a waterskin and you’re goddess-knows-where in a desert. You don’t even know which way it is to civilisation. Good luck getting out of this one, hero. _

Link breathes. In, out, his emotions a push and pull in his chest. When he squints he can see a blue light on the horizon, a boss monster lunging out of the sand and towards another monster. He swallows. There’s a distant, dying wail.

_...Not that way, then.  _ He looks up, then; the sky is bereft of clouds, the sun a slow, rising presence far above. Following the sun is a good place to start, Link decides. So he ties the strip of cloth over his mouth and nose, adjusts his grip on the dagger and waterskin, and begins walking.

Half a day passes before he feels tired. Link digs a halberd up from the desert sands. The metal scorches his palms, for now. It will be freezing when the sun sets, and the cold begins to sink in. But that is not now. Link needs to focus, now, or he will die here in the desert.

(He almost laughs to himself. In a way it would be funny, wouldn’t it? The scourge of evil, the hero of Legend, felled because he woke up in a desert one morning. Then he realises he doesn’t know how he actually got to the desert, and that settles in his stomach like a stone.)

Either way, doubt has begun to settle within Link. He hasn’t seen any desert fruits in all his journey ─ that says something about it all, he thinks. Surviving the unsurvivable, as Zelda would call it. Link doesn’t really care. He nearly cries when he stumbles upon a cactus that bears fruit.

_ You can split them open,  _ he remembers hearing, once.  _ They’ve got water inside ‘em.  _ How to get at it, though?

Link settles for stabbing a tiny dagger-point hole at the base, then lining the waterskin up with it. Sure enough, there’s the sound of water trickling out of it. When there’s no more noise Link splits it in half with a deft movement, then scoops out the soft, pulpy centre. It tastes so indescribably good after half a day with nothing but the taste of sand in his mouth.

He forces himself not to rush through it; food is important, after all. Especially so in a desert. Link takes only the tiniest sips of water. He walks on.

And walks, and walks, and walks.

When he blinks, Ravio is staring down at him. “You just vanished,” he says, and it sounds like he’s fretting. Was he… worried? “One minute you were there and then you just. You were gone, Link.”

Link lets Ravio scrape his fingers through his hair, sand dripping out in oddly-timed waves. Each movement is gentle, verging on tender. “It was a desert,” he says dully; his voice is scratchy, hoarse with dehydration. Every word makes his lips crack. Unbidden, Ravio passes him a glass of cool, clear water.

Drink, swallow. One hand tears the cloth from around his face, dropping it onto the table. It snags around a bracelet, a ring, stays stuck. Does not move. Ravio gently tears it free. “A desert?” 

“There was ─ I got lucky. I had a waterskin, at least. A weapon. I could have died.”

“But you didn’t,” Ravio hums. He digs up something metal from a pocket, placing it against the flattest part of Link’s palm. “Just for you, it’s free of charge!” Link peers down at the object in his hand.

It’s an earring, he thinks, or another similar piece of jewelry. A small hoop with a fine metal chain, linking the metal ring to a cut gemstone. Topaz carved in the shape of a moon. How strange, for Ravio to give it to him for free. How oddly sentimental.  
  


It happens again. Link wakes, weighted down by the sleep-dust that sticks to his eyes, and he smells farm life and hears unfamiliar, boisterous laughter. “Again?” A woman is saying, both distant and nearby. “The things that man gets into…”

Link blinks his eyes open; the woman above him looks like Marin, almost. Her hair is fire, lit by the rising sun, but where Marin wore blue she wears cream. She doesn’t have a harp like Marin did. The nostalgia threatens to choke him, so Link pushes it aside.

“Good morning,” says the woman, almost smiling. She has a kind smile. “Do you know where you are?” 

“No,” Link manages, eventually. Waking has left his thoughts muddied and unclear. “I was at home? And then I woke up here.”

The woman explains to him what’s been happening ─ her husband, a man who looks almost exactly like Link, has vanished once before and been replaced by another boy. He’d been back within the week, and Malon (everything about her feels familiar, like Marin) had taken care of the boy for the time he had been there.

She sets him to chores while she cooks. It’s good to have something to do, even though Link won’t admit it. He takes a broom and sweeps the floors of dust and dirt, until the wood panels are near gleaming. He feeds the cuccos. He sits and eats the warm, filling meal she offers to him.

Link blinks, once, and Ravio is there, and Ravio is hugging him.

“At least it wasn’t a desert this time,” Link says. When Ravio laughs it sounds almost disbelieving.

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone wants music i was listening to dry hands from minecraft while i wrote this :0
> 
> basically, i thought, _leg in desert what will he do next_ and then. this happened! also i like to think that before lu they get shuffled around diff hyrules? they never meet but like. [hyrule shuffle!]
> 
> comments are my lifeblood <3


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